AMD, in collaboration with Microsoft, has announced the release of C++ AMP version 1.2 - an open-source C++ compiler which implements version 1.2 of the open specification for C++ AMP, available on both Linux and Windows for the first time. The release represents another step forward towards AMD’s goal of supporting cross-platform solutions, multiple programming languages and continued contributions to the open-source community.
"AMD has a consistent track record of enriching the developer experience, and we are proud to make the first open-source implementation of C++ AMP available to enable greater performance and more power-efficient applications. The cross-platform release is another step in strengthening AMD’s developer solutions, allowing for increased productivity and accelerated applications through shared physical memory across the CPU and GPU on both Linux and Windows,"said Manju Hegde, Corporate Vice-President, Heterogeneous Applications and Solutions, AMD.
“AMD continues to deliver excellent developer tools for heterogeneous programming. Partnering with AMD to deliver C++ AMP to the Linux and Open-Source communities was a natural step for Microsoft as we work to improve the performance and developer experience on modern computing platforms,” said S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice-President of the Developer Division, Microsoft.
A key performance feature of version 1.2 of the open-source C++ AMP specification is support for shared physical memory, which greatly simplifies sharing of data between the CPU and GPU on heterogeneous platforms. Heterogeneous platforms built on the new spec allow programmers to benefit from minimized overhead of expensive data copies and pointer updates when accelerating applications.
